“Why are you trying to help me? I thought—I thought you didn’t like me.”
“Doesn’t have anything to do with likin’ or not likin’. She’s comin’ for you, and you don’t need any distractions.” Amma raised an eyebrow. “And I don’t want anything to happen to my boy. This is bigger than you, bigger than the both a you.”
“What’s bigger than both of us?”
“All of it. You and Ethan just aren’t meant to be.”
Lena looked confused. Amma was talking in riddles again. “What do you mean?”
Amma jerked around as if someone behind her had tapped her on the shoulder. “What’d you say, Aunt Delilah?” Amma turned to Lena. “We don’t have much time left.”
The pendulum on the clock began to move almost imperceptibly. The room began to come back to life.
My dad’s eyes started to blink slowly, so that it took seconds for his lashes to brush his cheeks.
“You put that bracelet back on. You need all the help you can get.”
Time snapped back into place—
I blinked a few times, glancing around the room. My father was still staring at his potatoes. Aunt Mercy was still wrapping a biscuit in her napkin. I lifted my hands in front of my face, wiggling my fingers.
“What the hell was that?”
“Ethan Wate!” Aunt Grace gasped.
Amma was splitting her biscuits and filling them with ham. She looked up at me, caught off guard. It was obvious she hadn’t intended for me to hear their little girl talk. She gave me the Look. Meaning, you keep your mouth shut, Ethan Wate.
“Don’t you use that kinda language at my table. You’re not too old for me to wash your mouth out with a bar a soap. What do you think it is? Ham and biscuits. Turkey and stuffing. Now I been cookin’ all day, I expect you to eat.”
I looked over at Lena. The smile was gone. She was staring at her plate.
Lena Beana. Come back to me. I won’t let anything happen to you. You’ll be okay.
But she was too far away.
Lena didn’t say a word the whole way home. When we got to Ravenwood, she yanked open the car door, slammed it behind her, and took off toward the house without a word.
I almost didn’t follow her in. My head was reeling. I couldn’t imagine what Lena was feeling. It was bad enough to lose your mother, but even I couldn’t guess what it would feel like to find out your mother wanted you dead.
My mother was lost to me, but I wasn’t lost. She had anchored me, to Amma, my father, Link, Gatlin, before she left. I felt her in the streets, my house, the library, even the pantry. Lena had never had that.
She was cut loose and coming unmoored, Amma would say, like the poor man’s ferries on the swamp.
I wanted to be her anchor. But right now, I didn’t think anyone could.
Lena stalked past Boo, who was sitting on the front veranda not even panting, even though he had dutifully run behind our car the whole way home. He had also sat in my front yard all through dinner.
He seemed to like the sweet potatoes and little marshmallows, which I had chucked out the front door when Amma went into the kitchen for more gravy.
I could hear her shouting from inside the house. I sighed, got out of the car, and sat down on the porch steps next to the dog. My head was already pounding, a sugar low. “Uncle Macon! Uncle Macon! Wake up! The sun’s down, I know you’re not asleep in there!”
I could hear Lena yelling from inside my head, too.
The sun’s down, I know you’re not asleep!
I was waiting for the day Lena was going to spring it on me and tell me the truth about Macon, like she’d told me the truth about herself. Whatever he was, he didn’t seem like an ordinary Caster, if there even was such a thing. The way he slept all day and just appeared and disappeared wherever he felt like it, you didn’t need to be a genius to see where that was going. Still, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there today.
Boo stared at me. I reached out my hand to pet him, and he twisted his head away, as if to say, we’re good. Please don’t touch me, boy. When we heard things start to break inside, Boo and I got up and followed the noise. Lena was banging on one of the doors upstairs.
The house had reverted to what I suspected was Macon’s preferred state, dilapidated antebellum finery.
I was secretly relieved not to be standing in a castle. I wished I could stop time and go back three hours. To be honest, I would have been perfectly happy if Lena’s house had transformed into a doublewide trailer, and we were all sitting in front of a bowl of leftover stuffing, like the rest of Gatlin.
“My mother? My own mother?”
The door flung open. Macon stood there in the doorway, a disheveled mess. He was in rumpled linen pajamas, only what it really was, I hate to say, was more of a nightdress. His eyes were redder than usual and his skin whiter, his hair tousled. He looked like he had been run over by a Mack truck.